Related papers: Cosmology and Life
For most of its history, cosmology was a qualitatively constrained discourse on the universe, shaped by limited observational access and the absence of global dynamical laws. This situation has changed decisively in recent decades. Modern…
The current expansion of the Universe has been observed to be accelerating, and the widely accepted spatially-flat concordance model of general relativistic cosmology attributes this phenomenon to a constant dark energy, a cosmological…
The past few years have seen dramatic breakthroughs and spectacular and puzzling discoveries in astrophysics and cosmology. In many cases, the new observations can only be explained with the introduction of new fundamental physics. Here we…
In this brief review I will touch upon the main points and thends of observational and theoretical cosmology, that influence and change today our understanding of the Universe.
These notes present a brief introduction to `naturalness' problems in cosmology, and to the Cosmological Constant Problem in particular. The main focus is the `old' cosmological constant problem, though the more recent variants are also…
The acceleration of the cosmic expansion is a fundamental challenge to standard models of particle physics and cosmology. The new physics of dark energy may lie in the nature of gravity, the quantum vacuum, or extra dimensions. I give a…
The aim of this thesis is to question some of the basic assumptions that go into building the $\Lambda$CDM model of our universe. The assumptions we focus on are the initial conditions of the universe, the fundamental forces in the universe…
The accelerating expansion of the Universe points to a small positive value for the cosmological constant or vacuum energy density. We discuss recent ideas that the cosmological constant plus LHC results might hint at critical phenomena…
The old cosmological constant problem is to understand why the vacuum energy is so small; the new problem is to understand why it is comparable to the present mass density. Several approaches to these problems are reviewed. Quintessence…
A general sketch on how the problem of space dimensionality depends on anthropic arguments is presented. Several examples of how life has been used to constraint space dimensionality (and vice-versa) are reviewed. In particular, the…
The changes of main paradigms on the structure and evolution of the Universe are reviewed. Two puzzles of the modern cosmology, the mean density of matter and the regularity of the Universe on large scales, as well as the possibility to…
Associated with the cosmic acceleration are the old and new cosmological constant problems, recently put into the more general context of the dark energy problem. In broad terms, the old problem is related to an unexpected order of…
Over the past decades, advancements in observational cosmology have introduced us in an era of precision cosmology, dramatically enhancing our understanding of the Universe's history as well as bringing new tensions to light. Observations…
In order to account for the observable Universe, any comprehensive theory or model of cosmology must draw from many disciplines of physics, including gauge theories of strong and weak interactions, the hydrodynamics and microphysics of…
Within some approaches to loop quantum cosmology, the existence of an Euclidean phase at high density has been suggested. In this article, we try to explain clearly what are the observable consequences of this possible disappearance of…
Exploring the Universe is one of the great unifying themes of humanity. Part of this endeavour is the search for extraterrestrial life. But how likely is it that we will find life, or that if we do it will be similar to ourselves? And…
The possible imprint of quantum decoherence, in the framework of cosmology, is here investigated. Particular attention is paid to the observational fact that entanglement could lead to the interaction of different eras of cosmic evolution.…
Since its inception six decades ago, astrobiology has diversified immensely to encompass several scientific questions including the origin and evolution of Terran life, the organic chemical composition of extraterrestrial objects, and the…
Several problems in cosmology and astrophysics are described in which critical phenomena of various types may play a role. These include the organization of the disks of spiral galaxies, various aspects of the problem of structure formation…
The early cosmic inflation, when taken along with the recent observations that the universe is currently dominated by a low density vacuum energy, leads to at least two potential problems which modern cosmology must address. First, there is…